Coming Back
by gopadfoot
Summary: Sherlock has gone to a place where no one can reach him. So the report read, more or less. But there must be someone who will still try. A/N: This is sort of an expanded rewrite of "When Minds Go MIA," but ended up very different! ;)


**A/N:** While I'm struggling with writer's block when trying to update my unfinished stories, I've decided to go through some older ones and fix up those that I feel weren't up to par. This is a rewrite of an old story, "When Minds Go MIA," now completely redone. I hope you enjoy, and consider dropping me a review if you did!

* * *

Lady Smallwood watched the feed coming out of Eurus's lair. The images might have passed for the filming of a sappy movie. A family, so long torn apart, finally being reunited through the power of music, love and foregiveness. Lady Smallwood's expression remained impassive.

"She still isn't talking," her PA commented. "That's good, isn't it?"

"Eurus Holmes isn't the one I'm worried about," Lady Smallwood said tightly.

The PA looked at her boss uncertainly. "Mr. Holmes... He doesn't really care for that- that show, does he?" the assistant asked in a low voice.

The Lady shook her head grimly.

"Are you concerned about how he's taking this?" the younger woman probed.

"I'm concerned about the same issue Mycroft's concerned about. What he's always been concerned about."

The PA nodded in understanding. There was no doubt about exactly what, or rather who, was worrying Mycroft. Constantly.

* * *

Three months later, Lady Smallwood was once again monitoring the cameras of Sherrinford. It was usually Mycroft's job, but she took over when Mycroft was unavailable. She had her suspicions that Sherlock tried to time his visits when he knew Mycroft couldn't watch, but there wasn't anything either of them could do about it. Mycroft would review the feed later, in any case, but Sherlock's message still got to make his point.

She hadn't expected something like this to happen on her watch. She watched something happen to Sherlock, right in the middle of a musical session with Eurus. He had suddenly and abruptly stopped playing, letting the bow hang from his hand.

"Why," he said flatly.

Eurus looked at him blankly.

"Just tell me why," he repeated, in the same monotone.

Eurus looked at her violin, and then at Sherlock, in confusion.

"You killed Victor. He was seven years old. Seven. _Why,_ Eurus." This time, it wasn't phrased as a question. It was an accusation.

Lady Smallwood placed a hand over her mouth. This was different. She watched Eurus's bewildered expression, like a small child who was wondering why her favorite wind-up toy suddenly sputtered to a halt. She didn't think Eurus posed a problem right then. But what about Sherlock?

"You could have _told_ me you were lonely. Or, I don't know, just have sent Victor away, without killing him! You are a master manipulator, after all!"

Elizabeth twitched her hand in the direction of the secure phone line. Should she intervene now? Or should she let Sherlock have the opportunity they never let him have, to feel what the little boy he once was used to feel?

"What did you do to Redbeard, Eurus? Why did you take him away from me? I never had a friend before. Why did I have to lose him?"

Elizabeth looked intently at the screen showing Sherlock's front. His violin was hanging limply from his right hand, and his expression was now screwed up in some combination of emotions she couldn't identify. She glanced again towards Eurus, now gazing into the distance, her expression blank. She reminded Elizabeth of a kite that had lost the string that tethered it to earth, and was flying high, high above.

Lady Smallwood picked up the phone and dialled. "Leave him there for now. But keep an eye on him. Two, preferably."

Sherlock's lowered his voice. "I never said goodbye. I didn't even know where he was! You gave me hints, enough to tantalize me with the promise of an answer. I drove myself to the edge of insanity, trying to figure out the puzzle. And you just sang your riddle, over and over again. Why, Eurus, _why_?"

In her cell, Eurus gently puttered with her Stradivarius, and then put it away. Then she sat down on her bed and stared at the ceiling. Sherlock's shoulders were now trembling slightly, in rhythm with his rushing monologue.

"You burnt down our house. I felt the heat of the flames upon my skin, and saw the orange tongues licking the sky. I was sure I was about to be consumed. You took my friend, and you took my home. With water, with fire. You. Took. left me an empty shell. WHY, Eurus, WHY!"

Lady Smallwood snatched the phone again. "Go in, NOW! Take him away." She watched Sherlock approach the glass and begin pounding his fists on it. "Be gentle," she whispered. She left the line open, waiting.

"Answer me, Eurus! You said- you said you wanted me to play with you, and I came! I played! But you never told me why! Answer me WHY!"

Two guards were now slowly approaching Sherlock, calling for him to come with them. Sherlock ignored them.

"You say you had no one, you were alone in the sky. Did you want me to be the same? Lost, broken, alone? That's what you did to me. WHY?!"

The guards now had the detective trapped between them, one hand placed on each of his arms.

Eurus squinted at her now crying brother, and then turned indifferently away. Sherlock was being gently but firmly turned away from the glass, and marched out of the room. He didn't fight them. His monologue still went on full-force, approaching a rant.

"All my life! Searching, looking, and never finding! How could I, when I didn't even know what I was looking for! You made me into what I am, Eurus. The world's only Consulting Detective, who solved his very first case thirty years too late!"

Lady Smallwood watched Sherlock being eased into a chair, still not resisting. A white-coated woman approached him carefully, a paper cup flushing with water in one hand. "Mr. Holmes, please take a drink," she urged him softly. Sherlock stared at her blankly, then gave a bitter chuckle.

"No, I don't need your water. You killed people! You forced them to murder the ones they loved! You made us suffer through vivisection, and I still don't understand why!"

"I need to speak to the doctor," Elizabeth demanded from her side of the line. Her request having been fulfilled, she spoke quickly. "He needs to be put under. He's losing touch with reality, and may become a security concern."

Several guards tried to hold the now thrashing detective in place, while the doctor spoke in soothing tones, trying to calm her patient down.

His tone and demeanor only became louder and more frenzied. "You tried to drown John! And kill Mycroft! No, you made _me_ try to shoot Mycroft! What do you want from me, Eurus? To become just like you? Alone, without a single friend? A _murderer_?"

In relief, Elizabeth watched as the needle finally slid into the tender skin, and Sherlock began going slack. It didn't stop him from whimpering, one final time, "Why, Eurus, why, why me..."

From behind the glass, the wild-haired woman frowned in puzzlement, and then reached for her violin.

* * *

No one could get through to Sherlock Holmes. He had gone to a place where no one could reach him.

That was what the report that reached Lady Smallwood's desk read. More or less.

"What is your opinion on all of this?" Elizabeth confronted Mycroft Holmes, cornering him in his office.

"Really, Lady Smallwood, I can hardly theorize without all the data," Mycroft snapped.

She gave him an odd look.

"I haven't seen him myself. I can hardly read his state of mind by the drivel these so-called professionals have written."

"Ah, I see. May I ask _why_ you haven't yet seen him?" She asked frostily. She hardly thought this was the time to for the ongoing petty sibling rivalry that no one could do as well as the Holmes brothers. Sherlock had been in hospital for a week now.

Mycroft winced. "I have been informed that my presence is unwelcome," he said curtly.

"How can your brother have communicated that, when, according to this report, he is near-catatonic? He hasn't uttered one coherent sentence since he broke down!"

The look she saw on Mycroft's face was one more terrible than she had ever beheld on him. It was worse than the panic he sometimes showed after one of Sherlock's numerous escapades, worse than the rage she witnessed when he returned from rescuing his brother from the Serbian torturers. Mycroft Holmes now looked utterly defeated.

"It wasn't Sherlock. It was everyone else."

A while later, she left Mycroft's office, still seething over what she'd heard. All of Sherlock's "loved ones" had seemingly banded together to keep Mycroft out of Sherlock's care plan. They had insisted that Sherlock's state was mainly Mycroft's fault, for not seeing this coming, for not preventing it. And, of course, for having kept the truth from him all these years. As if that decision was solely on Mycroft's shoulders.

There wasn't much point in speaking to any of them, but she felt a desperate need to do _something._ Which meant calling Anthea in for a chat, of course. The PA didn't have much to add, only that Mr. Holmes didn't want her involved. "Eurus Holmes is secure. It's not a matter if national security now, only a family matter, isn't it?" Anthea said.

"God save us all from the Holmes 'family matters,'" Lady Smallwood sighed. "I'm sure we will still be hearing of this."

It took two more weeks for her prediction to come true.

"It's Dr. Watson," Anthea told her boss's colleague. "He wanted to speak to Mr. Holmes, but was refused. I suggested you as an alternative."

"I'm not Mycroft. I don't run in to clean up the messes the Holmes family made just because I'm expected to," Elizabeth frowned.

"Nevertheless," Anthea answered calmly. "I do suggest you speak to Dr. Watson."

Lady Smallwood beheld the sparkle of mischief in the younger woman's eyes. She nodded.

The doctor soon showed up at her office, looking put-together, but that didn't hide the weariness he projected. "What can I do for you, Dr. Watson?" she asked, her tone professional and unyielding.

"We need Mycroft there. He owes it to his brother."

"You need to be a bit more consistent, Dr. Watson. Just three weeks ago, you were accusing Mr. Holmes of committing atrocities against his family, by erasing Sherlock's memories and placing a little girl into hell. I believe you threatened to, and I quote, 'completely exterminate' him if he so much as came within a mile of Sherlock Holmes. Why the sudden turnabout?"

Dr. Watson swallowed, then jutted out his chin in his direction. "Nothing else is helping. His parents have been by his side constantly, begging and pleading with him to respond. Mrs. Hudson comes daily, with freshly baked biscuits that Sherlock has never been able to resist in the past. He doesn't touch them. DI Lestrade are has been over several times, talking about cases, trying to trigger a response. Molly Hooper came once. She couldn't bring herself to come again. I myself- " the doctor broke off, something catching in his throat, "I've tried everything. Reading the blog to him. Bringing Rosie. Yelling, begging, arguing. Sherlock hasn't said a word to anyone. He'll mumble and sometimes rant incoherently, but that's it. No communication."

"And why do you think Mr. Holmes can be of help?"

John sniffed once. "I spoke to the Chief Psychiatrist. I know he was cleared for some basic info on Eurus, but I wondered if he had the whole picture. I told him everything."

"Go on," Lady Smallwood urged, her voice slightly softer.

"When I began filling in the details, the doctor was incredulous. He grilled me for half an hour, and then spent the next fifteen minutes yelling at me. Although I really wasn't the only one at fault."

"No, you were just a convenient target," Elizabeth couldn't resist adding.

Dr. Watson clenched his teeth. "Maybe," he gritted out. "But I should have seen this coming. I don't know what we were thinking." He shook his head fiercely, eyes burning with what could only be guilt. "He just relived all the trauma of his childhood. And we piled everything onto him. All the responsibility, all the burdens... I expected him to be there for me, to fill the emptiness left by my late wife, all while he was still blaming himself to an extent for her death."

Elizabeth's face softened in empathy. She knew what it was like to lose a spouse to their own choices, and blame oneself for not doing more to prevent it. Nonetheless, she offered no platitudes. She knew it wasn't what the doctor needed.

"He made it his mission to save Eurus. He blamed himself for causing Victor's death, and Eurus's psychosis, by not saving her from herself when he was a child. A seven-year-old child! And we went along with it, with Eurus's story of loneliness and looking for salvation, and encouraged Sherlock to play with her. After everything she's done to him." The doctor paused. "Were we all _insane_?"

The government official kept her face carefully neutral.

"He told me his mother asked him for help. She said he always was the grownup. He didn't believe in that, but he wanted to justify her faith in him. We all had our expectations... Even Lestrade told him how he was now the good man he believed he could become. He was trying to look after everyone, and forgot to look after himself." Dr. Watson swiped a hand over his eyes wearily. "I forgot, that on occasion, he himself can be just as human as the rest of us."

Lady Smallwood considered the man in silence for a long moment. "What did the psychiatrist suggest?" she asked carefully.

"The doctor asked me if there was anyone who would be less of a threat to Sherlock's state of mind. Someone whom he wouldn't view as his responsibility, as his burden. Someone who could still see him as a child who needed to be cared for. Because right now, he is that child."

"He cannot stay that way forever," Lady Smallwood protested. "Sherlock _does_ need to grow up, eventually."

"Eventually. But right now, Mycroft Holmes is our last hope." The doctor looked her straight in the eye, waiting.

Elizabeth nodded. "I'll talk to him."

* * *

Mycroft's only condition was to keep his parents out of the loop. "They won't cooperate," he told his colleague flatly. "They won't understand."

"Have they ever?" she asked. Her question remained unanswered, as all rhetorical questions should.

In the end, Mycroft reluctantly agreed for three people, besides the medical staff to stand by outside as he met his little brother. Elizabeth knew that being included, along with Anthea and Dr. Watson, was a sign of faith that Mycroft didn't give lightly.

The threesome watched from doorway as Mycroft Holmes, codenamed Antarctica, a.k.a the Iceman, sat beside his brother's bed and stroked his hair with as much tenderness as any mother might stroke her newborn babe.

"Are you still looking for him, Lock? Are you looking for Redbeard?" they heard him ask quietly.

A whimper-like sound came from the grown man in the bed. "Did Eurus get him?" Mycroft continued. "Did the East Wind come?"

"Red-redbeard," Sherlock whispered. "Red- _drowned_ Redbeard."

"Yes. That's not easy to solve, isn't it? The clues seem inconsistent." Mycroft continued soothingly. "You don't have to find him yourself. I never should have let you do it alone, Sherlock."

The younger man was now mumbling frantically, leaving the eavesdroppers to strain their ears to catch bits and pieces. The words floated out the door like a garbled radio transmission. "Dug and dug... never find him... can't do it, Mike! Failed... stupid little boy... You always thought- stupid me, sixteen by six..."

John Watson had turned away from the other two, his back a solid brick wall blocking any invasion. Lady Smallwood kept her eyes averted as she heard the sound of his sniffing, while Sherlock rambled on in the background.

"No," Mycroft's voice cut through, the word coming out a command. " _You_ never had to find him. You were just a little boy. It's not your job to save everybody, all the time."

The younger Holmes made a gasping sound in his throat, close to a sob. " The puzzle... my puzzle. She said- it's mine. Have to solve it. Save everbody. But then, everybody dies."

"Yes, brother mine," Mycroft agreed. "That's why I keep on warning you. Don't get involved, Sherlock. Look at what it's done to you. I don't know if I can still save you now. You should never have let yourself care so much."

Elizabeth stiffened. This was _not_ what they had expected Mycroft to do. She wondered at his strategy. Was he trying to revert Sherlock to his previous sociopathic behavior? Did he really think it would help Sherlock, considering what it did to him the first time around?

"All hearts are broken, Sherlock. You know that well enough. Caring is not an advantage. It never was."

Dr. Watson made a move towards the door. Elizabeth placed a hand on his shoulder. "Let me," she whispered.

"Can't stop- can't stop, Mike! It hurts. Hurts so much!" Sherlock burst out, clutching Mycroft's arm in a frantic grip.

Lady Smallwood, one foot over the threshold, paused.

Mycroft seemed to deflate. "I know, Lock, I know. It never stops hurting. And we can't just stop caring, either. It just doesn't work, does it?"

"Mike, I want to go home." Sherlock begged, grasping at his brother's sleeve.

"So do I, brother mine. So, do I."

Sherlock buried his face into the crook of Mycroft's elbow, and sniffled into it quietly for several minutes,while Mycroft held his other hand on the back of Sherlock's head. The sniffles slowed down and finally stopped as Sherlock drifted off to sleep.

Mycroft continued talking softly to his now unconscious brother. "The home we both still dream of doesn't exist anymore, Sherlock. But I'll do whatever it takes to bring you back to where you belong."

Lady Smallwood stepped back out, and gently closed the door. For now, she resolved, she would just let two lost little boys be.


End file.
